


Go Your Own Way

by DawnlitWaters



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Post-Movie: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-04 04:44:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10983627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DawnlitWaters/pseuds/DawnlitWaters
Summary: The Guardians, up to somethin' good, somethin' bad and a bit of both on the side.And all the unspoken things in between.





	1. Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "No gravity remember, dumbasses?”

_Your head is humming and it won't go_

_In case you don't know,_

_The piper's calling you to join him,_

_Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow_

_\- Led Zeppellin_

 

To begin with, it’s the worst kind of job. Dubiously legal, and in a thoroughly dull and sensible part of the galaxy. The type of place that has rules, regulations and sentences for scavengers found on Nova Corp property. Even a massive cargo ship, badly battered and bombed in a raid, left floating midway between two planets of the Xandarian empire.

Anything valuable has long since been taken. The wreck is so old in fact that most of the cargo – scrap or otherwise – is long gone. Their buyer has information though – a secret compartment containing several tons of contraband, that a ship captain on the take had been only too pleased to ferry off-world for a handsome price. Sadly he didn’t live to enjoy it.

“Rohmann Dey isn’t going to be happy if he finds us here, that’s for sure.” Peter slaps one of Rocket’s spacesuit units to his shoulder, and the eerie purple web surrounds him.

“So don’t let him find us.” Gamora checks the sword at her hip, fires up her own suit.

Drax shuffles up beside her, already glowing purple, and checking his knives. Satisfied, he closes the airlock door behind them. Gamora taps her comm link.

“We’re all set, Rocket. Open the doors.”

“Okay, but no gravity remember, dumbasses?”

“No gravity in space, got it” Peter rolls his eyes at Gamora. She turns to look straight ahead, but she can’t help the smirk that pulls at her mouth.

There is a click, an electric whirring, followed by a fierce whooshing noise as the air gushes out. The door shifts fully away, and they stand looking out into the vacuum of the ruined ship’s carcass.

 

Stepping forward is a little like being drunk – not that she lets herself get drunk that often. Gamora floats out from the airlock, jetting down from the lip of the outer door and drifting serenely to a stop on the metal floor below. One hundred metres away, the floor cracks up, revealing metal supports like plant fronds, shifting slowly in space. The walls of the main hangar they’ve landed in are similarly patchy, with large holes blown at random intervals.  Some reveal floors and staircases that used to be internal to the ship: others just look out onto space.

“Creepy” Drax volunteers, as he lands beside her.

“Sure is.” Peter is looking round at the damage. Slowly, he reaches round to the screen hooked on his belt and brings up the map. He turns about to get their bearings.

Gamora can’t quite get used to seeing him outside without his mask. The crushed and shattered remains of it are currently on Rocket’s workbench, awaiting some serious repair. And meanwhile, all that stands between the soft pink skin and kind green eyes is a glittery purple force field, with all the ballistic stopping power of tissue paper.

She shakes herself out of it.

The three of them part-walk, part-jetpack through the bones of the old vessel, using their hands on railings and steps as they go. The place is a warren of corridors, stairways and deep, dark lift shafts, made all the more surreal by the occasional gaping hole torn in the fabric of the ship.

Eventually they reach the engine deck. Deep in the bowels of the ship, the structure is largely undamaged, though the aftershocks of the main blasts have shaken loose fixtures and shattered glass. The engine itself is huge and cold – shut off or simply run down is hard to tell. The only light comes from the glow of their suits, and an occasional spark as one of them fires the jetpack to steady themselves.  Drax reaches for the heavy torch strapped to his thigh, holding it up above their heads. In the pitch black space it doesn’t do much but illuminate the shadows.

Peter holds out the map, and points. His voice crackles over the comm link.

“Over there. Second panel from the doorway.”

They jetpack across, landing either side of the door. The three of them unhook the tools they’ve brought, and set about prising open the compartment. It takes a few heaves on the impromptu lever, but eventually the aged bolts give way. The metal panel floats off, and reveals a pitch black corridor, not much taller or wider than Drax.

Cautiously, the three of them clamber into the narrow corridor – Peter first, Gamora second and Drax third. They quickly come to a solid door that slides open as they approach, sliding shut again as they pass.

A loud humming noise starts up around them. Gamora thumps the door but it doesn’t budge.

Abruptly, with almost winding force, the artificial gravity comes on and all three of them slam to the floor. A steady hissing noise sets up, very much like air flooding the compartment. Peter pushes up to a sitting position, reaching for the scanner at his hip. After a moment, he deactivates the suit, holding up the scanner so she and Drax can read it.

“Breathable. Someone set this place up with all the bells and whistles.”

“I do not hear any bells and whistles? What is he saying?”

Before the lesson begins, the door opposite slides open to reveal… more corridor. Gamora sighs, deactivates her suit, and stands up.

The corridor winds on and on, twisting about between the ship’s real service corridors and air ducts. At some points, it veers up steeply, with metal rails set into the wall to climb. At other times, the floor drops abruptly  away into a seemingly bottomless void, space-black and echoing their voices back at them as they descend.

 By the time they reach the end point – a small rectangular grille barely big enough to crawl through – Gamora can feel her elevated heart rate, and hear Drax and Peter’s laboured breathing.

“Speak out friend Quill – has this tiresome perambulation come to an end?”

Peter appears to consider the matter, before giving the grille a well-aimed kick. It floats away into the unseen space beyond. Peter turns, holds out the map screen to her.

“Here.”

He turns back to the gap in the wall, crouches down, appears to think better of it then stands and pulls the jetpack off. Rolling his shoulders, he crouches down again, lays on his stomach, and wriggles through, his forearms tucked across his chest. Gamora averts her eyes. Assassins do not ogle their colleagues’ well-shaped rear-ends, however much they might wish to.

“Oh man! You guys have got to see this. We hit the jackpot!”

Peter disappears completely and at an accelerated speed. A thud from the other side of the wall and a muffled “Ooof” suggest a short drop on the far side.

“Quill? What have you found?”

Drax crouches down, nearly crushing her against the wall. He leans down, trying to shuffle through as Peter did, but his shoulders are too wide and he quite plainly doesn’t fit. He sits back, beats his fist on the wall in frustration.

“Curse these Xandarians and their tiny bodies!”

“Let me through – you wait here and contact Rocket and Kraglin. We’ll need to find a better way of getting the stuff out.”

Somewhat appeased, Drax retreats. Gamoroa pulls off her jetpack, drops down, stretches her arms into the gap and feels for the edge of the drop. Tucking her head in, she rolls herself through in one fluid motion, flipping out the other side and landing neatly. She observes Peter, standing in the middle of the room and rubbing his arm. He frowns at her.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re a highly trained gymnast and I’m an idiot. I get it.”

“I’m sure you have other skills you can bring to the team. At some point.”

“Yeah well, picking contracts is right up there on the list. You seen where we’re standing?”

She looks around, taking proper note for the first time. The room they’re in appears to be a sort of alcove off a much larger space.

The walls are lined with crates. Unopened, undamaged crates, stacked twenty high, several rows deep. Gamora steps forward, to where the walls and ceiling open out.

 

The bay is well-lit and big, the same size as the engine room they passed through. In fact, there’s an engine housing unit fixed in the centre of the room, with no engine in it. Instead the housing, and every available space around it, has been packed with crates. Peter lifts the lid on the nearest, revealing bricks of black, shiny metal, that glitters oddly in the light. Another opened lid reveals uniform packets of unmarked white powder. The crates stretch on before them, full of unmarked, unlabelled treasure.

“Quill? Gamora? What is it?”

Peter ignores him, taps the comm link at his neck.

“Rocket, see if you can get a fix on us. This is the biggest haul you’ve ever seen, man!”

 “Yeah, yeah we’re trying. All the wreckage is making’ things a little tricky but we’re on our way. I’ve just been speaking to the walking thesaurus, says you and Gamora are on a sightseeing tour. What’s going on?”

Peter shakes his head, wanders off among the crates. Gamora sighs.

“We’ve found the cargo, and there’s a lot of it, but we can’t get it out the way we came in.”

“How much you lookin’ at, huh? Cos’ I seen some hauls in my time.”

Gamora looks round the hall. Peter is over by another crate, with the lid open. As she looks at him, he reaches in and lifts out a shimmering length of fabric that folds and drapes over the lid of the crate. He grins at her. She feels a smile tug at her mouth again. To distract herself, she scans the room, runs some numbers in her head.

“About 200,000 crates. Rare metals, fabrics, something that looks like moon-powder-“

“Holy shit! We’re comin’, we’re comin’.”

The comm clicks off. Behind her Drax calls out.

“Drug dealing is immoral. I am not comfortable with it.”

Gamora rolls her eyes, calling back over her shoulder.

“Okay so we’ll leave the moon-powder. Sit tight there, we’ll see if we can laser the wall open when Rocket gets here.”

Drax grumbles indistinctly but she’s already walking. Letting herself smile, she sets off towards where Peter is rifling through another crate. Several items glint on the upturned lid – as she watches, he lifts something up for inspection, before it disappears into his jacket pocket.

Once a thief, always a thief. Typical. Predictable.

She’s about to call him out on it when a loud bang sounds through the hall. Then another. The rapid shriek of light ammunition. Rocket’s voice sounds out, loud and urgent over the comm.

“We got company out here! You guys guard the cargo!”

Another blast, and the walls around them shiver. They’re deep in the ship, but it sounds like their attacker is drawing closer. Another round of rapid fire, another blast and something metal creaks deep, deep in the ship.

By unspoken agreement, Gamora and Peter fire up their suits. Gamora unsheathes her sword, Peter unholsters a blaster. They stand, expectant in the middle of the hall.

Another blast, much louder, and the floor shakes. Another, and another. Crates on the highest piles begin jumping, some toppling and crashing into other stacks. The cargo begins to spew over the floor: clothing, gemstones, weapons and some expensive looking art.

“Where is that insolent rodent when we need him?”

Drax sounds angry over the comm, but there’s no sniping reply. Gamora can hear him shifting about in the corridor.

“Drax get your suit on!”

The distant roar of an engine begins to sound through the room. It definitely isn’t the Quadrant. It rips past, heavy fire hits close by and all the lights flick out. All that remains is the purple luminescence of the suits, and the faint glow of an emergency light.

Everything goes quiet as the engine noise recedes. Peter shifts to stand closer to her, and she isn’t sure who’s protecting who. She grips her sword tighter.

They wait.

Static crackles loudly on the comm and Rocket’s voice sounds out, barely audible over heavy fire and the sounds of Kraglin and Mantis shouting at each other, or possibly at Groot.

“They’re coming for the cargo!”

Sure enough, the engine roar returns, followed by three heavy blasts, one after the other. They feel and sound like direct hits on their location, echoing round the room with vibrations that Gamora can feel in her lungs. The floor shakes, falling fixtures and cargo clatter and crash in the semi-darkness.

Another pass, and part of the metal wall at the further end of the hall deforms, service pipes cracking and spewing gas and liquids.

A memory of the cargo bay where they landed flashes in front of her eyes. The holes in the walls, the gaping floor, opening onto space. The lack of air, and gravity.

She grabs Peter by the arm, and tows him across to the engine housing. As she goes, she pulls the thin rope from her tool belt – another Rocket innovation that she is thankful for. She clips one end to her belt, and searches about for something to anchor the other end to. The base of the engine housing is surrounded by guard rails and they look sturdy enough, so she hooks the carabiner to it.

Turning, she sees Peter has got the idea and is unravelling his own, hooking one end to his belt. He smiles at her, holds out the carabiner for her to attach it.

A blast, louder than before, so much louder it nearly deafens her. Something metallic screams in pain, followed by a loud, angry hiss. She sees Peter shout out rather than hears it, sees his arms suddenly wind-milling, and for a terrible moment she thinks he’s been hit. Then she wonders what the hell he’s doing, waving about like that.

Then she realises that she’s floating. That they’re both floating. That all the crates around them are slowly lifting up, up and away.

A jolt, as the rope fixed at her waist pulls taut. Peter is still drifting, the carabiner floating away weightless and useless. She stretches out and just barely grabs his hand. Inch by inch, she manages to walk her fingers up his palm, under the sleeve of  his jacket, until she has a firm grip on his wrist, and his fingers are wrapped around her forearm. She doesn’t trust the railing on its own, so as the rope loosens and she drifts backwards, she throws out her other hand for a different part of the housing. Still gripping her arm, Peter is drifting above her in the almost-dark, feet almost over his head as he floats in a slow, gentle arc. She looks up at him as another blast shakes the cargo bay, making her ears ring.

“Kinda wishing we didn’t leave those jetpacks back there, huh?” he shouts.

“You think?” she yells back.

The sound of Drax bouncing from wall to wall in the confined corridor echoes out from the alcove.  The comm crackles again, but this time it’s Kraglin.

“Peter, Gamora, Drax – you there? You got your suits on? You got the jets?”

With his free hand, Peter taps the comm at his collar.

“Negative – suits, no jets. Gamora and I are in the main hold – Drax is in the corridor from the main engine room, with all the jet packs.”

“Okay… Well are you both holdin’ onto somethin’?”

Gamora looks round at the thin, black rope coiling out from her belt, her hand around the engine housing. Turning her head, she looks at Peter’s hand around her arm. Peter looks down at her, something a bit like fear starting to cloud his expression. They both know what’s coming, but it doesn’t make it any more pleasant to think about. He swallows.

“Sorta.”

“They’re gonna blow the hold open, Peter. I don’t think they want anythin’ but the booty, but…”

Whatever he might have said is drowned out by the sound of gunfire. The engine roars directly overhead, and then appears to settle outside, beyond the far end of the hall. The rumble lessens, she can hear her own heartbeat in her ears, Peter’s breathing across the space between them.

One loud, resounding blast, and the sound of metal tearing.

Gamora tightens her fingers around Peter’s arm, skin warm through the suit. She feels his hand squeeze a little tighter in return.

A second blast, and the deformed metal at the end of the hall twists and warps further.

She looks up at him, his soft green eyes, and his open expression, and her heart clenches painfully. He swallows, hard, and she watches the movement beneath his alien, pale-pink, vulnerable skin.

A third blast, the metal screams, the air rushes past them and her belt nearly cuts her in half as the rope pulls taut and she’s yanked forwards by the pull of the vacuum. She can hear Drax yelling as he’s thrown up against the wall. Peter’s hand grips her arm painfully tight and she closes her fingers as hard as she can. Her other hand tightens around the casing and her arm feels as though it might snap from the strain.

Crates rattle past them like meteors, sucked down the hall and out through the ragged, gaping hole. The rope anchoring her strains and pulls, and she’s terrified that at any moment the fabric of the ship will give way and she and Peter will be hurled out into space with the rest of the cargo. Light flashes, the orange lick of a tractor beam, lapping up the crates and their flying contents as they’re jettisoned into space.

Over Peter’s shoulder, she glimpses the dark, hulking shape of the enemy scavenger ship.

An entirely different fear overwhelms her. She lets go of the engine casing entirely, clasping her second hand higher up around his arm. He’s shouting something at her but she has no hope of knowing what it is. The rope shakes violently behind her, but she doesn’t reverse her decision: she tightens her fingers on the leather of his jacket, and clings on for grim death.

 


	2. And then she asks me, "Do you feel all right?"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dazed, confused and, once he’d realised what had happened, really freakin’ pissed off.

_And then she asks me, "Do you feel all right?"_

_And I say, "Yes, I feel wonderful tonight"_

_\- Eric Clapton_

 

“Douchebags!” spits Rocket, when they are all safely gathered back on the _Quadrant_. The ship is covered in scrapes, burns and the occasional tear. Their whole scavenging enterprise seems to have been no more than a minor irritation to the crew of the other ship – origin still unknown – which left with all the bounty and no discernible damage whatsoever.

Rocket spits again, and thumps his fist on the table. Drax sits silent, slowly sharpening his knives and presumably vowing dire revenge. Gamora is flicking through something on one of the portable screens, legs folded neatly beneath her, expression clouded.  Kraglin emerges from the corridor, and silently hands Peter an icepack.

It’s going to be a spectacular bruise, judging by how much it hurts. He winces as he presses the cold material to the side of his head. Kraglin has the good grace to look guilty and ashamed as all hell. Not that Peter blames him, particularly. Well, maybe a little bit.

Once the enemy ship had made off with the loot, and the pressure had evened out, he and Gamora had been left floating in the middle of the bay. It might even have been quite a romantic moment, if not for Drax bellowing down the comm to be cut out of the wall.

The _Quadrant_  arrived, Rocket flew out suited and jet-packed, and armed with a laser cutter, and proceeded to cut Drax free.

They should have put the jetpacks on and flown back to the ship. If he’d been quick about it, he’d maybe have got her princess-style in his arms before she could kick his teeth in, or break his arm. Maybe.

But no. Kraglin had been thinking speed over style, and he’d switched on the tractor beam. Rocket had severed the tethering rope on his way past, and all four of them had glided serenely back towards the ship.

Right up until the point when Peter, facing the wrong way and unable to shift position, had been dragged head-first into the edge of the ragged hole in the side of the bay.

He’d woken up on the floor of the ship, dazed, confused and, once he’d realised what had happened, really freakin’ pissed off.

Okay, yeah. He did blame Kraglin.

Mantis has taken it upon herself to cook dinner, which means leaves and fruit and a cut of the strange, cheese-like substance that lives in the fridge but never appears to go off, or even reduce in size. She hands round bowls, dropping Peter’s in front of him with a force that makes his head pound. She shoots him a reproving look, the whole thing a not-so-silent rebuke for being less than co-operative with her earlier attempts at playing Doctors. Lord knows she means well, but facing a choice between whatever Mantis thinks looks suitable for humans in the medicine cabinet, or a pounding headache, the internal drum-solo wins every time.

Peter shifts the icepack a bit, feeling cold drip down his neck. He flicks his eyes up to see if there’s any solidarity or sympathy to be found from Gamora, but she’s still engrossed in her screen. He thinks briefly that, if Gamora had told him to lie on the sick bay table while she rifled the medical cabinet, he wouldn’t have been able to say ‘yes’ fast enough.

He shifts the ice-pack again, and half-heartedly starts in on the salad-and-possibly-cheese.

~

Dinner eaten, washing up argued about and blame suitably handed out for the abysmal failure of their mission, the group starts to break up. Teenage Groot has already retreated to the dark, dank cave he’s made for himself in one of the cabins. Mantis has finally given up trying to nurse Peter and gone to sleep, and Gamora has gone for a shower and to, quote, “Figure out how to fix this mess, as usual.”

Well, he’s certainly not got enough functioning brain cells to do that. Peter yawns, and stands up to leave and fall into bed. He can worry about fixing this in a few hours’ time.

Kraglin frowns.

“You shouldn’ go to sleep on your own, t’night Peter. You might have concussion.”

“Well I ain’t damn well babysittin’ him. Humie wants to go getting’ his head caught on a wall, that’s his problem.”

Rocket hasn’t even begun to forgive Peter for not _somehow_ finding a way to stop all their loot being stolen. The fact he’s been knocked senseless doesn’t seem to have been punishment enough. He hops off the chair and strides out of the room, muttering darkly.

Kraglin and Peter turn to look at Drax, who has gone back to sharpening knives. He pauses, and without looking up, states:

“I am no babysitter.”

He continues running the whetstone along the blade. Peter rolls his eyes, turns to leave: fights down the sudden rolling dizziness.

“I’m fine. I’m going to sleep.”

“I could keep an eye on you?” Kraglin looks up hopefully, apparently looking for a way to absolve himself of knocking his captain unconscious.

“Hell no, you’ve done enough. I’m going to sleep and that’s it.”

~

He looks up at the ceiling, head swimming. The icepack drips on his neck and shoulder, dampening his pillow. He’s not sure if he feels ill or not.

Minutes tick by.

He thinks about the cargo hold full of treasure. The weird markings Rocket and Kraglin described on the enemy ship, once they were all back on board (and conscious). What their buyer is going to say, when they return empty-handed.

He groans, fumbles for the music player on his bedside table. It lacks the pleasingly clunky, familiar mechanism of the Walkman, but it does have more music. He shuts his eyes and skips through tracks until something mellow comes on.

A few bars in, and a business-like knock sounds on the door. He knows who it is, because only three members of the crew ever bother to knock.

(Kraglin knocks and, having lived in a Ravager ship for longer than ten minutes, yells a bit afterwards. Mantis knocks so lightly it takes a good few seconds to realise you’ve heard anything at all. Gamora knocks like she’s delivering imperial edicts and she’d like you to look smart about answering because she has more important people to see.)

He abandons Eric Clapton, and the Zune’s darkly comical sense of timing, chucking the player and earphones onto the table.

“Hey, door’s open.”

She steps into the room, with a wash of scented air as though she’s come direct from the shower into his room. Her hair is wound in a plait and still a little damp. His heart-rate ticks up in his chest.

“Kraglin said someone needed to watch you, and since you rejected his offer–“

“ – and the rest of the crew are selfish assholes –“

She bobs her head.

“ – and since the rest of the crew are selfish assholes – I said I would do it.”

And suddenly he doesn’t blame Kraglin for the incident with the tractor beam _at all_. Suddenly he realises that Kraglin is a freakin’ _genius_.

“You don’t have to” says the part of his brain that doesn’t know when to shut up.

She fixes him with a look.

“I’m just going to sit over here and read, it’s no great hardship. I hope you weren’t expecting anything else.”

He holds his mouth closed. Expecting? No, definitely not. Hoping, a little bit? Yeah. As always.

Even a conversation. Just so he knows he isn’t making the whole thing up. He can still feel her shoulders under his arm. How quiet her voice was.

_“Peter?”_

_“What?”_

_“It’s just some unspoken thing.”_

Did it even really happen? Because he’s starting to doubt it. God knows he was wound up enough right then to have imagined just about anything.

No point worrying about it. He shuffles his shoulders about, settles down into the mattress. He does feel very tired. He closes his eyes, decides to make an honest attempt at sleep.

“That’s fine. Jus’ so long as I don’t pass out in the night or anything.”

“Kraglin says I have to wake you every two hours, and check your pupils.”

“Sounds like a party.”

She doesn’t say anything – judging by the small noises from across the room she’s just settling into the chair and loading the screen she’s brought with her. It’s quiet, with the slight hum of the ship. He drifts.

~

He wakes to a weight on his forehead.

“Peter?”

“What? Shit, what… oh.”

He’s struggling to sit before he realises what’s going on and why someone is leaning over him and pressing his forehead. She peers at him in the half-dark of the room. His head pounds in waves.

“I need to turn the light on and check your eyes.”

“Oh right. ‘kay.”

She goes for the lamp beside the bed: watches intently as his eyes adjust.

“They look normal. Do you feel sick?”

“Not really.”

“Dizzy?”

“Little bit.”

She considers this information, presumably against the ‘Terran Physiology 101’ lesson she’s had with Kraglin in all of ten minutes before coming to watch him. As if Kraglin’s any kind of expert in the first place.

“I’m pretty sure I’m fine” he volunteers, helpfully.

She drops her hand from his forehead. He misses it, instantly, which is ridiculous.

She watches him a moment longer, and then sits back.

“Go to sleep, Peter.”

So he does.

~

“Peter?”

It’s a whisper, barely audible. At first he thinks he’s dreamed it.

“Peter?”

He blinks into bleary wakefulness. The shadowy shapes of his room swim into focus around him. His head pounds, but he feels oddly clear-headed. He looks up at her, her worried, curious face looking down at him. Her hair has fallen out of its plait and hangs like a soft curtain around her head and shoulders.

“Hey” he smiles at her. He feels very peaceful.

God, maybe he is dying after all?

“How do you feel?” she whispers.

How does he feel? His head hurts, sure, but otherwise he feels pretty good.

He considers playing for sympathy. He can’t do it, though, not when he feels this peaceful.

“Alright. You know, calm. At ease. Sleepy.”

She frowns, reaches out a hand for the lamp and he winces a bit at the sudden flare of light. He manages to reopen his eyes so she can check them. It would be good this, gazing into each other’s eyes, if his head didn’t hurt quite so much.

Kraglin’s still a genius but his methods are pretty rough ‘round the edges.

“Your eyes look okay.”

“I thought you really liked my eyes?” he says, playfully, and because why the hell not? He’s ‘possibly concussed’, he can probably get away with it.

She flushes instantly and her expression goes hard and closed and _oh_ _shit_ she really _does_ like his eyes. _Holy shit._

She sits back and regards him balefully.

“I think you’re probably going to be fine.”

“Feel a bit dizzy, if I’m honest.”

She wavers, her expression softens. He’s not entirely lying – he _does_ feel dizzy. It just has nothing to do with being hit on the head with a cargo ship. He processes the new information about his eyes, or rather her opinion of them. Savours, is a better word. He rolls the thought around his pounding head and it’s not exactly paracetamol but it’s a damn close second.

“Do you feel sick?”

“No, don’t think so.”

She nods. Remains seated on the edge of the bed. He’d like her to stay all night just so he can look at her. He’d like to hold her hand, pull her down onto the bed with him and kiss her and touch her until she can’t remember her own name. He’d like to fall asleep breathing in the scent of her skin and hair.

He’d like that a lot.

He swallows.

“You should go, I’m okay. Really.”

It’s not going to do either of them any good, this little night-time vigil. He knows he’s fine, she knows he’s fine, _hell_ Kraglin probably knew he was fine when he suggested all this. They could both do with a full night’s sleep. He pushes up so he’s half-sitting, propped on his elbows.

“Really. I’m fine. You should get some sleep.”

She looks away at the carpet. Doesn’t say anything. He frowns.

“Gamora?”

“I thought I was going to lose you.”

Silence. His heart lodges suddenly in his throat. He can’t breathe, let alone talk. She heaves in a breath.

“Lose my grip, I mean. In the cargo bay.”

Silence again. She refuses to look at him. Air trickles down his throat, his head throbs with every too-loud bang of his heartbeat. After what feels like hours of silence, he finds his voice.

“You didn’t, though.”

She shifts, looks up at him.

“You always keep me out of trouble.”

More silence. Apparently she doesn’t feel the need to reply. She keeps on looking at him though, eyes focused and piercing, and her gaze sticks in him and twists, like the galaxy’s most attractive and deadly can-opener. She must know she’s doing this, what she keeps stirring up, and yet she keeps on doing it, with seemingly no intent of doing anything about it.

Maybe she just likes twisting him around her little finger. He swallows again. Pitches his voice soft and low. If he had a catchphrase these days, it would be this. If only in his head.

“What are we doing?”

The question hangs between them. Or rather he’s just stringing more lights round it. Pushing to make it spin round and round.

Her expression saddens, minutely. She still doesn’t look away.

“I have really no idea.”

She waits a second, then stands. And leaves.

Peter sits in the darkness and feels dizzy and sick all at once.

Still, it’s probably not concussion.

 

_And the wonder of it all_

_Is that you just don't realize how much I love you_


	3. You can't always get what you want

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She has bigger things to worry about than Krylorians with an overblown sense of entitlement.

_"You can't always get what you want"_

_\- The Rolling Stones_

 

Rocket lands them expertly at the docks, and they file through processing and de-con and the mandatory planetary briefing. Peter has to diffuse the usual Rocket vs. the establishment debate about animal quarantine.  Mantis unsettles one of the Planetary Officers by revealing his deep-seated insecurity about his much more attractive wife.

It’s an uneventful arrival, as these things go.

Their buyer spends her time on Sylar III – part of a small, exclusive system almost entirely given over to the enormously rich and deeply immoral. Sylar III enjoys the most temperate and unvarying climate of the system, and so the largest houses and estates are to be found there, serviced by armies of privately employed workers and support industries, who make do on Sylar I, II and IV. Security is tight, disease and non-compliance abhorrent – after all, their argument says, if you have enough money to own, run and rule large swathes of planet, why should you look at the sick, the lame or the ill-formed?

After a large dose of Peter Quill charm, they finally agree to let Rocket in.

~

They leave Mantis at the space port to pick up supplies, armed with a much argued-over list. She wanders off into the crowds, eyes popping out of her head at so many beings all one space and so many sights and smells. It’s part of an unofficial Mantis Rehabilitation Programme, and occasionally she doesn’t get fleeced and actually makes it back with something edible.

The rest of them head to the planet’s intercontinental transport system. It’s a pretty quiet ride in the shuttle, the only sound a tuneless hum as they are shot through tunnels deep below the planet’s surface. Rocket sits with his arms folded, apparently daring their uniformed chaperone to look at him.

Once under the right land-mass, their shuttle ascends with blistering speed to the surface, the decompression system whirring.  The doors open into a long glass cylinder, with a smooth moving walkway ready to carry them through to the doors of another, above-ground shuttle. More whirring air-conditioning, shiny glass, chrome panels and bright, artificial light. They stand in silence on the eerily quiet travellator. The doors hiss shut behind them and hiss open at the far end as they approach, revealing another uniformed chaperone, who exchanges papers with their tube companion, and ushers them into the new shuttle.

Peter shoots Rocket a look, and Rocket mutters but doesn’t actually say anything.

The shuttle hovers, smooth and near silent, carrying them down tree-lined avenues cast in bright, cheerful sunshine. Other shuttles pass, and they catch glimpses of the rich and their aides, ostentatiously and impractically dressed. Everything is spotless, maintained and perfect.

The shuttle leaves them at the gates of an enormous estate, the house not visible from the main avenue. A chauffeur with a private shuttle awaits them on the far side of the gates.

Rocket works his jaw, pulling saliva into his mouth, leans over to spit at the departing shuttle –

Peter’s hand closes around his snout.

~

“Little bastard _bit me_!”

“You were trying to suffocate me!”

“I was trying to save your life, trash monkey!”

“Oh give it up humie, just because you love it, all _shiny_ and _perfect_. Makes me want to _puke_ –“

“Don’t even think about it, you’ll get us all killed, you little –”

Gamora massages her temples. The furious argument rages on, hissed and whispered in the far corner of their buyer’s reception room. One of her reception rooms. Drax sits on the sofa opposite, looking even more over-sized than usual on the neat, fussy furniture, like an imposter in a dolls house.

“I _said_ we shoulda’ left you on the ship with Groot an’ Kraglin –”

“Oh yeah? You wanna try an’ put me back there, Quill? That wasn’t barely a bite before, you might wanna say goodbye to your fingers – ”

Drax slaps his hands down hard on his knees.

“Shut up!”

The bellow makes them all jump. A massive silence fills the room, punctuated only by the _slip_ _tick_ of the large, unnecessarily ornate clock suspended in the centre of the room.

Rocket and Peter retreat back to the sofas. Gamora expects Peter to come and sit beside her on the otherwise empty sofa, but instead he sits down beside Drax, who shuffles up to make room. Rocket plonks himself down beside her instead, expression stormy.

They sit through another space of awkward silence. Rocket digs his short claws into the upholstery, then retracts them. Digs them in, retracts them again. Two sets of tiny puncture marks, almost but not quite invisible. Peter slouches back against the cushion, arms folded. Silently furious.

~

She makes them wait a good long while, finally deigning to appear as the shadows outside start to lengthen. A tall, elegant Krylorian, dressed in loose, flowing trousers and tunic. Her arms are adorned with golden bangles, her ash-blonde hair piled artfully on her head and studded with rubies and garnets. A widow of four very rich, very old and, now very dead, husbands. She regards them through eerily bright blue eyes. The only thing about her not recoloured, tucked, plumped or primped artificially is her soft, sly voice.

“Good evening.”

They all leap to their feet. Drax and Peter bow their heads; Gamora dips a faint curtsy – so faint as to be barely a curtsy at all. After the performance last time they were here when they took the contract on, she knows what’s coming next.

Rocket stands up and refrains from spitting on anything, which he considers tribute enough.

Peter has been elected spokesperson, partly because, if they had a captain, he would be it, but mostly because none of the rest of them wants to fess up to having ballsed up the contract so badly. Also, he has a distinct negotiating advantage.

“Lady Pas – pleasure to see you gain ma’am.”

She smiles beatifically at him – a row of perfect, pearly-white teeth – and extends her hand, palm downwards, fingers folded down. Peter takes it, hesitates, and gingerly lifts it to brush his lips against her knuckles. She smiles again, more coyly.

“Hello again, Peter.”

She glances around at the rest of them, her smile becoming rather less friendly.

“And all your charming friends. I think they might be more comfortable in the garden, shall I call for drinks?”

Gamora sees Drax start to draw breath and she shoots out a hand, fingers jabbing him between his ribs. He coughs, gasps almost doubles over.  Lady Pas’ gaze settles on them, her perfectly shaped eyebrows quirking slightly.

“No thank you, here is fine” says Gamora, very politely.

 “I see – are you quite –”

“Naw, you know what, I fancy a drink. All this air conditioning, makes me wanna heave. C’mon you guys.” Rocket turns to them, conspiratorially, whispers as they walk out “might as well get a drink outta this.”

Lady Pas smiles properly again as they file out. Her hand migrates to Peter’s arm, slides up to his shoulder. Gamora pauses in the doorway, and sees the Krylorian turn away momentarily to ring the servant bell. Peter catches her eye, mouths silently:

_Don’t leave me here!_

Gamora shrugs, shakes her head helplessly and then the servant sent to collect them is coughing politely beside her. Reluctantly, she leaves the room. Peter’s face as she leaves is a picture.

~

The terrace is sunlit and warm and liberally supplied with loungers and a never-ending stream of fruity alcohol. Drax and Rocket have made themselves quite at home – Gamora sits stiffly on the edge of a lounger, not touching her drink.

“We shouldn’t have left him there.”

“Aww c’mon, Gamora. He’s had a rough week, let him have an afternoon off.”

Drax laughs, deeply and glugs his drink. Rocket settles back more comfortably in his chair.

“Jus’ cos you don’t wanna screw him. Maybe she likes Terrans?”

Gamora doesn’t reply. Rocket smacks his lips. On the far lounger, Drax takes a thoughtful sip.

“Gamora may have a point. I’m not sure this is moral – is it right to substitute him for the cargo?”

Rocket pauses in his drinking.

“Hey, whatever keeps the lady happy. If she thinks he’s pretty enough to offset the loss of 200,000 crates of near priceless merchandise, that’s her screw up. I ain’t judgin’.”

Drax frowns.

“I don’t think you understand.”

Roclet rolls his eyes.

“Aww come on! Point is, Quill’s getting some much needed R&R, and we get a moderately happy customer. Win win, right?”

~

As soon as they’re out of the room, she fixes him with the kind of smile a shark would give a dolphin. She holds out both hands.

“Come here?”

He tries to paste a smile on his face, and walks obediently over. He takes her hands.

“Will you dance with me, Mr Quill?”

He holds onto the smile, just about.

“Sure!”

He hopes she’ll mistake his mild panic for enthusiasm. He doesn’t want to think about what happens when he tells her they don’t have the cargo.

Dancing is… awkward. It’s like manoeuvring an over-large doll, and however he tries, when he goes one way, she goes the other. He reminds himself that she’s a paying client and that anything to forestall the inevitable is probably A Good Thing.

Suddenly, she leans in close, and whispers:

“I know you don’t have it.”

He feels every hair on his skin prick up. He stops even trying to dance. She rests her hands on his shoulders, stands right in front of him.

“Why weren’t you successful?” she looks sad, disappointed. Petulant.

He swallows.

“Well, we… uhh… We found the hold, just like you said. But so did these other guys, and there was this whole space fight, and we nearly got ripped out into space, and then they… kinda… took all the cargo.”

“How awful for you.”

Peter licks his suddenly very dry lips. She watches him do it. Intently.

He swallows, again. The ornate clock ticks away the silence

“So… you lost it?” the Krylorian says, very softly.

“Well, more like we didn’t steal it in time –”

“Hmmmm.”

She gazes up at him. He realises her fingers are very tight on his shoulders. Very tight indeed, almost bruising.

“I wonder…  Given that you and your little friends have failed so utterly, I think I am owed some kind of… recompense.”

“Oh yeah?”

His voice sounds weak to his own ears. He wonders if the others are within yelling distance.

“Hmmmm.”

Lazily, without letting up on his shoulders, she leans in. He can feel her mouth on his neck. It’s merely _just weird_ , for all of three seconds, and then he feels her teeth sink into his skin and he yelps and springs away from her.

She looks at him balefully. Behind the door, he hears heavy footsteps. Several of them.

He lifts his hands in a conciliatory gesture, although at this point it’s probably way too late. _Shit, shit shit, where are they?_

“Hey, now, look. You are, ummm, a very attractive woman an’ all and I’m flattered, really I am. But, uhhh, I’m not… er… well, I’m not a consolation prize, okay? It’s not, ‘oh sorry, we didn’t get your treasure, but hey look you can have this guy instead’. It’s not… I mean, that’s really not how it works.”

“Isn’t it?” she steps towards him again, predatory, placing her hands on his shoulders.

“He’s right, you know. That isn’t how it works.”

Peter looks up, and she’s there, lounging in the doorway. Just like the first time he saw her and forgot how to breathe for a moment.

Lady Pas spins round, flustered. Gamora eyes her up and down, doesn’t move an inch.

“I was coming to an arrangement with your, captain, _girl_.”

 _Oh shit_ , Peter thinks, and tries to back away. Gamora’s expression freezes, in a terrible imitation of a smile. She pushes off the doorframe, rolls her shoulders back and advances into the room. She’s a good foot shorter than the Krylorian, but for a moment it doesn’t look like it.

“I don’t like your arrangement.”

The Krylorian bares her teeth and hisses.

“And my name isn’t ‘ _girl’_.”

“I don’t care what your name is. Know your place.”

Gamora tilts her head on one side. The Krylorian is fit, true, but only as much as she needs to be to fit into all her bizarre outfits. She’s never had to run anywhere, climb anything, or break someone in half for taking liberties with her close friends.

“My name is Gamora.”

The Krylorian suddenly goes very pale. Gamora steps forward.

“Daughter of Thanos. And your worst nightmare, if you don’t take your hands off my friend.”

She lets go of Peter, abruptly. The ticking clock marks out the silence. Gamora extends a hand.

“Let’s go, Peter.”

He takes it, follows her out into the corridor. Steps around the three groaning security guards outside the door.

“You really have to try diplomacy once in a while, you know that?”

She drops his hand and spins to face him, so quickly he nearly walks into her.

“Oh really? And where was diplomacy getting you back there?”

“Hey, I was dealing with it.” Outrageous lie, they both know it. He considers trying to take her hand again, but that’s probably not a good idea. She turns away, continues stalking off down the corridor, unerringly leading them to the exit.

~

They meet Rocket and Groot in the avenue – Rocket still sipping his drink – and together they wander – quite quickly – down the road until the nearest shuttle point. The whole laborious and irritatingly glossy process of intercontinental travel begins again. 

“Well screw it, we don’t need her stinkin’ units anyway.”

Rocket chucks himself into one of the bench seats.

“Maybe not, but we will need someone’s units soon. And for that we need recommendations. Plus I doubt that her units would be anything other than fragrant.”

Rocket rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, yeah – but we saved the whole goddamn galaxy twice! What more we gotta do? Jus’ cos Quill can’t multitask, don’t tell me that’s us on the scrapheap.”

“Hey! What was I supposed to do, stretch myself across the hole in the ship like a soccer net?”

Rocket wrinkles his nose.

“Like a what?”

“Oh forget it.”

“Also what’s wrong with you? Pair o’ big blue eyes, an’ what are you doin’? Arguin’ about ‘arrangements’ and ‘this isn’t how it works’. I thought you had a reputation before we met you?”

Peter shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

“Jeez, man, I had a reputation, not a red light over the door.”

They fall into silence again. Gamora notes with a slight sense of unease that Peter has once again failed to sit next to her. Not that it matters.

She tips her head back against the wall, lets her mind drift. Tries not to think about the dark, blotchy mark mostly hidden by Peter’s collar. It shouldn’t annoy her as much as it does.

But _stars_ , does it annoy the living the hell out of her.

She curls her fingers, uncurls them. Her palms itch. He’s her friend, and she shouldn’t have left him. She slipped up. It won’t happen again.

She shuffles on her seat, reminds herself that she has bigger things to worry about than Krylorians with an overblown sense of entitlement.

Things like the ship, beyond the ruined hull of the Xandarian cargo ship. Because she had recognised that ship, floating there in the darkness, and Rocket and Kraglin’s description adds weight to her theory.

She’d hoped never to see it again.

But she has to be sure. She needs to speak to some people. Ask around the kind of beings who know things they shouldn’t. They’re not that far from Knowhere here, and that would be just the place.

Knowhere. They haven’t been back since the incident with Ronan. Anywhere else and they’d be public enemies numbers one through five, but on Knowhere there’s no one to turn them away. Or who will even care all that much – the damage to the city was minimal, and if they spend half as much in the bars and gambling dens as before, they might even be begged to stay.

She’s always had a soft spot for the place, anyway. It was somewhere she fitted in, not home at all, but somewhere familiar and not actually hostile.

She flicks her gaze over at Peter. He has his eyes closed, earphones in, head back against the wall.

Knowhere was where all the trouble started. All this… unspoken nonsense. Not that she’d thought of it like that at the time. It had been easier, then. He was just an idiot trying to flirt with her, and God knows she’s had enough practice at dealing with that.

And then he’d gone and saved her life, and she’d had no idea what to do about it.

Still doesn’t, in truth.

Because what _are_ they doing, exactly? She has no idea. Probably wasn’t a good idea to tell him that, in hindsight, because he’s clearly taken it to heart. He normally bounces back – he flirts with her, she snipes at him, or occasionally reciprocates – repeat cycle. Quite possibly until one of them dies, because she really doesn’t know what comes next, or how to get off the spinning wheel, or even if she’ll like it if and when she does.

It’s safe, as it is. He’s still just an idiot, flirting with her. Occasionally she’s the idiot who flirts back.

That’s it. It doesn’t have to go anywhere. He’s her friend, after all.

She remembers drawing her first, aching breath and opening her eyes inside an unfamiliar mask. The nonsensical sight of Quill, in space, in front of her. Seeing the ice on his skin and realising that the warm-but-rapidly-cooling arms around her belonged to him.

It did prove that he was an idiot, albeit a sweet one.

The capsule shivers to a halt around them. They’re back at the space port. Kraglin will be anxiously awaiting their return, Mantis might even have a meal cooking and Groot may even emerge from his room to welcome them if he’s in a really good mood.

They trail back through processing – decidedly quicker on the way out – and are eventually back on the ship. Gamora still isn’t used to seeing the _Quadrant_. At some point they really need to get back to the Milano – she knows Peter is skittish without the large cassette player and his Mom’s original mixtape. They’re all getting by without most of their possessions, but Berhert is really a long way away. She doesn’t want to make the trip without confirming her suspicions first.

Rocket settles back into the pilot’s seat, firing up the engines.

“Let’s get out of this weirdsville, anyhow. Where can we get a decent drink around here?”

“Knowhere” Gamora says, too quickly, probably. They all turn to look at her. She shrugs, playing nonchalant. Rocket rubs his paws together.

“Okay. Knowhere it is. And if any of you call me ‘trash monkey’ again, you’ll be drinking through a straw.”


	4. Hitting an all-time low

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The bottle sways in front of him, and for a brief moment there are two of them.  
> Well, that answers that question.

_Strung out in heaven's high_ _  
Hitting an all-time low_

_\- David Bowie_

 

She has two drinks to be sociable, and to establish that they’re not imminently going to get themselves killed, and then she slips away. Or so she thinks.

“Where are you going?”

Drax’s voice sounds out behind her. She spins round. He watches her impassively, holding a drink but clearly not getting drunk this evening. Or not yet, at least.

“I have some personal business.”

“Is it something we can help you with? Families should support each other. If you have a problem, you should share it.”

Drax’s sometimes simple view of life is a comforting one. But not always realistic. She doesn’t want to burden them with this if she turns out to be wrong.

Or if she turns out to be right. But that’s another, different problem.

“I’m fine. Please go back to your drinking.”

He raises his glass to her, and watches her all the way to the end of the street.

~

“I am Groot!”

“No! You are not allowed this stuff, you’re too young. Anyway, you won’t like it.”

“Aw, go on Quill. Let him have a mouthful. Kid’s gotta learn sometime. No one cares here.”

“I care! He’s too young to be shootin’… whatever the hell this is… in bars.”

Drax appears beside them, looking thoughtful. Rocket waves his mostly empty glass at him.

“Where you been? It was your round, three rounds ago!”

Drax shrugs, noncommittal. Rocket swipes a paw in the air and turns back to the barman, who can’t pour the drinks fast enough. Drax looks around the small party: Kraglin, leaning back against the bar. Peter, beside him, holding his drink as far from Groot as possible, and Rocket, standing on a stool and calling orders to the barkeep.

“Where is Mantis?”

Peter tips his head towards the bathrooms.

“Had two shots of that blue stuff and ran off.”

“You did not follow her?”

Peter makes a face at him, Kraglin shrugs.

“Can’t follow ‘er into the ladies. It ain’t proper.”

The three of them look round the rest of the bar. While it’s fairly quiet – mostly groups in fives and sixes – there’s a set of shady guys playing cards at a table where, on closer inspection, one of the players appears to have been stabbed earlier in the evening and just left in his seat. A few feet away, two males of indeterminate race are trying to rip each others’ ears off. And in a far, darkened corner, there are some very suggestive noises from at least two couples.

 Kraglin coughs.

“I guess it ain’t that proper of a bar.”

Peter frowns.

“Isn’t Gamora with her? She’s been gone a while.” He’s been trying not to watch her, since… well, since she very succinctly stamped on his squashy Terran feelings. It’s incredibly difficult, but he seems to have mastered it at just the wrong moment.

Drax drains his glass, bangs it down on the bar.

“I will go and check on her.”

~

Gamora has been making discrete enquiries in the shadier areas of an already shady city. It’s a long route to the answer she needs ( _already suspects_ ) but she knows the route to take, and one or two shortcuts. 

It’s an old, all too familiar path.

Someone knows someone else. Who sold another party certain information. Which was passed along, and along, words going onward and units flowing back, and she follows the trail until she finds herself where she hoped she’d never be again.

Standing on the precipice, overlooking her old life.

And Thanos, there in the pit at the bottom.

~

It’s been an interesting few hours. Peter has spent most of it chasing Mantis around the bar and dragging her away from touching people, who are only too happy to get the wrong impression about her intentions. She’s calling out feelings, but as they’re mostly inaudible over the music, to the casual observer it looks like a drunk girl trying to make a move on anyone within arm’s reach.

There are quite a few ‘casual observers’, and even Peter thinks they’re sleazy, so he spends his time manhandling her back to their booth. She grips his arm and coos at him, and tells him things he already knows. Things which, thanks to her, everyone already knows. Drax just laughs at him and keeps drinking.

Eventually she passes out – or falls asleep, he’s not quite sure – and between him and Kraglin they balance her on a barstool and fold her over so her head is propped on her arms on the bar. She’s more stable there than she’s been for most of the night, so they sit at the bar beside her and Rocket passes round the bottle of God-knows-what he’s settled on for the evening.

Groot sulks in the corner, a glass of water on the table in front of him.

Rocket tops up his own glass, shoves the bottle along to Kraglin, who refills his own and pushes it none too steadily along to Peter.

He eyes it suspiciously. He’s still just about sober enough that he could choose not to drink it. That would definitely be the sensible choice – it tastes like scrumpy and the fumes alone could get a being drunk enough to order more.

The bottle sways in front of him, and for a brief moment there are two of them.

 _Well, that answers that question._ He reaches out with the extraordinary care of the horribly drunk, and slowly refills his glass.

He hasn’t been this drunk in a while. Normally there’s a voice of reason. He looks around the bar, nearly falls off his stool in the process. Kraglin grabs hold of his shoulder.

“Peter?”

“Where’s she?”

“Who?”

“Gamora. She was here… like… an hour ago?”

He can’t remember. It’s been a while. Hasn’t it? _Oh God, what is in this?_

“Oh not again. You gotta stop this, Quill!” Rocket waves his glass for emphasis, slopping liquid onto the bar. Kraglin turns round to look at him and it’s Peter’s turn to steady him on his seat.

“Wha’s he gotta stop?”

“This!” Rocket waves again, stands up shakily on his stool “All this… this… _mopin’_ around after _some girl_. It ain’t healthy!”

“I’m not, mopin’, man, I’m just asking where she is!”

“Bullshit!”

“It’s not, it’s not! She was here, and then… then now she’s not an –’”

Rocket jabs a claw at him.

“You can’t stop thinkin’ about her. It’s crazy! She’s an infamous assassin – and you? You think she’s gonna settle down an’ play house with you? You’re insane!”

He hasn’t got an immediate reply to that, and the thickening fog in his head isn’t helping. Rocket smiles, triumphant. Kraglin looks at him, pityingly.

Eventually he manages a response.

“ _Play house_?”

Rocket shrugs.

“Shack up with. Live together."

"We do live together, like, right now."

Rocket shrugs, again.

"You know what I mean. First she's sleepin' in your bed, then you start buildin' treehouses together, or whatever it is you humans do. Doesn't matter, it ain't ever gonna happen. Get over it." He swigs from his glass "Hell, I don’t think she’d even screw you out of curiosity.”

“One hundred units says she will!” Kraglin yells suddenly, slaps his hand on the bar. Rocket shouts with laughter.

“Done! You ain’t seein’ that again, ravager.”

Peter’s brain is taking a while to process events. It’s a question he’s been pondering himself, sober and drunk, for a while without much success.

“Why not?”

It’s not subtle, or contained. It certainly isn’t kind. Rocket spits alcohol over Kraglin, so great is the snort of laughter he can’t hold back.

“ _Are you freakin’ serious?_ Because she’s her and you’re _you_ , Quill. Jeez.”

Rocket shrugs, downs his drink and sits down.

“Of what are you talking?” Drax shouts, appearing behind them, a drink in each hand and a manic grin on his face. Rocket slaps the bar with one paw and jabs the other at Peter.

“This one wants to know why Gamora isn’t ever gonna sleep with him.”

Drax laughs, loudly. He throws back his head and goes for it. This makes Rocket laugh harder, and the two of them are practically howling with it in moments.

Kraglin pats Peter on the shoulder, uncorks the bottle and empties it into his glass.

~

The dark streets on this side of town are full of undesirables and low-lifes: a lot of beings intent on knocking down the defenceless and taking their units, possessions and any likely looking body parts.

Gamora walks through oblivious, head full of Thanos, the enemy junker ship and _why, why, why? Is it the loot? Was the cargo valuable – another infinity stone, right there under our noses?_

She gets several sorts of looks as she passes: speculative, wary, intimidating, lustful. None of it really registers.

_Or was it us, the Guardians? Was I meant to recognise that ship? Was it a warning?_

Shadows are moving and massing at the darkest edges of the street. Movement in doorways, out of alley ways – a sinister susurrus of unsheathing weapons and low, dry laughter.

_A warning to all of us, after the events on Nova?_

_He’s taken his time, if so, which isn’t Thanos’ style. Or is this a different warning altogether?_

She thinks of Drax yelling, the sudden, sharp pull of nothingness beyond the ruined shell of the ship – the overwhelming vacuum of space, and being tethered by nothing more than a high-tensile string and Peter’s grip on her arm.

No, she’s got that the wrong way about. Or not.  She tries it each way round: Peter’s grip on her arm, her grip on Peter’s arm. Neither makes any sense – Peter wasn’t tethering her to anything.

And yet.

Peter has seen her dance, heard her laugh. He trusts her with his childhood, and his delicate, hazy-vivid memories of Terra. She trusts him with a part of herself that she’s kept locked away and hidden for so long that she barely remembers how it feels.

She’d have clung on just as tightly to Drax, to Rocket – to any of them. They’re all family, after all.

But she can’t deny that, where Peter is concerned, there is something else going on. Something other. Something invisible, but tangible. She likes Peter. They have this unspoken thing, after all.

_Oh, shit._

She tops, very suddenly, in the street.

The shadows around her are taking on more definite shape and purpose. However, caught in the crossfire of two rather ground-shaking revelations – one, that she knows what game Thanos is playing, and two, that ‘the unspoken thing’ has quietly outgrown the carefully constructed mental compartment she had built for it – she doesn’t see them.

_Thanos doesn’t want the loot. It was never about the cargo. He had his mercenaries take the loot not because he wants it, but because he wants to watch it burn. The desire to destroy because he can._

_And to show just how easily he can take things_.

She thinks again of both her hands around Peter’s arm. A tiny child clinging to a favourite toy, against the echoing, overwhelming pull of space.

Coincidental, almost certainly. Even Thanos couldn’t have planned that. But it seals his message with absolute precision. And it ought to seal Peter’s fate as far as all this… this… _thing_ goes. He’s better off without her if she’s making him a target for Thanos.

Her chest aches. She doesn’t want to let him go. Not then, not now, not –

“Alright there, lovely?”

The corporeal street-shadow is on the floor seconds later, clutching what’s left of his nose. The one to her left screams in pain as she twists her dagger into his shoulder. The third gets a boot to the chest as she sweeps her leg up and around. Pulling her dagger free, she is ready as the fourth lunges at her, cleanly piercing his throat and out the other side.

Looking round, she sees the other shadows melting back to where they came from, not even pausing to rob their fallen comrades.

She cleans her dagger on the leg of a conveniently placed dead street thief. Takes a moment.

_This is why Thanos has been waiting. He wanted to send me a warning, and he’s been biding his time for maximum impact._

He knows her so well, – _hell_ he built most of her – and he’s timed it _just so._

For the first time in months, she knows what she wants. It’s been coalescing around her slowly: a family, a sister, a lover. (That word still makes her uncomfortable, _but why should it?_ She’s an adult, she’s allowed.)

It’s all there, all of it, and she’s been cautiously, carefully gathering it to her, a piece at a time as she adjusts her worldview to encompass the concept of ‘nearest and dearest’. Rebuilding herself.

And now there he is. Waiting to take it all from her.

Again.

She kicks a quietly moaning robber in the head. She wants to scream.

Suddenly the incident with Lady Pas comes into focus. In fact, the more she thinks of it, the whole job: unlikely treasure in an unlikely location. The sudden appearance of the enemy ship. And an amorous Krylorian with a Peter Quill fixation.

She has been played, utterly and completely, and she never even saw it coming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because Knowhere rings to the sound of David Bowie, and that's just how the galaxy works.
> 
> Thank you to all the lovely commenters, kudosers, bookmarkers, readers and invisible lurkers. You're all great and I'm happy if this makes you happy!


	5. Even if we're just dancing in the dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It occurs to her that, without realising it, she’s made one decision already.

_You can't start a fire worrying about your little world falling apart_

_\- Bruce Springsteen_

 

He wakes up in his cabin – somehow. He has no memory of leaving the bar, but apparently he managed it. He looks around the room, bleary. Everything is cast in a pale, whitish light. Fallen asleep with the lamp on, he reasons, slowly. With immense effort, he reaches out an arm to bat at the switch.

A warm, yellow glow suffuses the room.

His brain hurts. He blinks a few times. Bats at the lamp again, and the yellow glow vanishes, leaving behind only the dark of the cabin.

He groans, curses Rocket in all the languages he knows, and staggers out of bed.

~

He changes into his pyjamas, a task made difficult by the fact he daren’t move too quickly and that he can only just about control all four limbs at once. He’s finished before he remembers he could have put the lamp back on. He catches sight of the blurry image of Yondu on the shelf – a Kraglin find some weeks ago – and he imagines the Centaurian laughing at him and his inadequate, Terran liver. The thought makes him smile and ache all at once. He tries not to think too much about it.

The bathroom is a horror show – he nearly has a heart attack at the sight of the corpse in the shower tray, until he realises it’s Rocket. Groaning quietly.

He catches sight of himself in the mirror and he’s hardly better off. His hair is at all angles, his eyes won’t focus and there’s pillow creases like red marker pen across his face.

He frowns, and his reflection frowns back at him, reprovingly.

Sighing, he starts to lift Rocket up and out of the shower. The not-racoon grumbles, but doesn’t actually claw him to death, so he carries him down the corridor and into his cabin. As he stands from depositing Rocket on the bed, the furry bundle speaks.

“This never happened. You hear me?”

Peter makes a vague noise of assent, not yet awake enough to argue, and trots back to the bathroom.

It occurs to him that, in order to take a shower, he’ll need to take his pyjamas off. Groaning and whinging to his part-time brain functions, he begins the battle to organise his arms and legs again.

First though, he cautiously pulls down the neck of his t-shirt. The bite has risen and purpled and it makes a good set with the bruise on the side of his head. He shivers a bit at the memory, shakes himself out of it. Pulls off his shirt and wonders in vain whether bruises can be washed off.

~

Body showered, teeth brushed (though bite-marks and bruises unsuccessfully washed away), he does feel a bit more human.

Half-human. Whatever.

He pads carefully along the corridor, balance still a little off. The ship is quiet, the others still lying wherever they happen to have landed. He passes Kraglin, slumped at his cabin door, and pauses to shift him into a more comfortable position.

When he reaches it, the galley is cool and dark: the tap water a blessed relief. He fills as large a glass as he can find, and downs round after round. He sits in the pilot seat and waits as his brain catches up and the faint dizziness subsides. The garish, artificial light of Knowhere fills the cockpit, and he watches the lights flash and flicker, the various species going about their business in the streets below.

He hears steady, even footsteps along the corridor. The external door whirrs and hisses.

Steady footsteps rules out most of the crew right now. Peter reaches awkwardly across to open the monitors, taps vaguely at the console. Maybe they are being burgled, but he’s damned if he can do much about it right now, beyond eyeballing the suspect.

On screen, Gamora steps down from the ship, and sets off into the city.

He watches her familiar shape walk away. His heart tugs painfully in his chest, speeds up.

Rocket’s right, he _is_ pathetic. But he’s too far gone to do anything about it. He was too far gone months ago.

Too far gone to do anything sensible, anyway.

He doesn’t really have a plan – not even twelve percent of one – but knows that he needs to follow her. She’s been distracted by something the last few days, and maybe, just maybe, if he can figure out where she goes in her head when she goes quiet, or where she went last night, or where she’s going now…

Then maybe he could… do something. Hell knows.

He’s not sure _why_ he needs to figure it out. But he wants to.

Besides he cherishes time alone with her, the most precious moments of his life since Terra. If he has a chance at another, he’ll take it.

He slams down the glass on the counter, pulls a discarded hoodie from the couch and pulls on his boots at the door.

~

She hasn’t slept – cannot sleep – and she’s been sat watching over all of them for hours. Her awareness of the warning doesn’t make revenge come any swifter, but it makes the possibility more tangible. They’re vulnerable, all of them – because who isn’t vulnerable to a god? – but maybe if she’s there,  she can defend them.

It’s a vain hope.

Or maybe she shouldn’t stay. Maybe she should leave, go after Thanos, remove the threat. She always intended to. Join her sister, and end this once and for all. Catch up with him before he has chance to make good on his warning – do what he clearly expects, but do it quickly.

The argument has run round and round her head all night, until she’s not even sure there’s an answer. She feels paralysed, caught in indecision – an unfamiliar situation. She has become used to knowing her own mind. Even on Sanctuary, where she chose not to know her own sisters and began not to know her own body, she always knew her own mind.

She needs air, and heads outside to get it. The balcony – _the_ balcony – is a little distance away from the ship, but any act of Thanos’ will be loud and audacious, even from afar. The warning may have been subtle, but the strike won’t be – he will want to make them suffer after all, to let them see their doom approaching and feel the hopelessness of no escape.

She will hear it coming.

Besides, she likes the idea of being close to her memories right now. Nebula would call her sentimental, but she doesn’t care. This is for herself. A selfish little piece of stolen time, while she tries to referee between her heart and her mind.

She leans on the rail, gazes out at the stars and lets herself just _be_.

“Whatcha’ doin’?”

She whirls round. Peter is stood behind her. In pyjamas, and the oversize, hooded jacket that he insists on calling a ‘hoodie’. Not a shred of armour, as far as she can make out, and he’s just walked here all the way from the ship.

It’s exactly the normal standard of Peter Quill idiocy that she’s come to expect. Never mind Thanos, left to his own devices, he’ll be dead in days.

Maybe it makes no difference, what she does. Death and destruction – for Peter, for all of them – whether she stays or goes.

She looks more closely at him. He looks a bit bleary, but his expression is clear enough. He looks wary, curious. Worried.

“Gamora?”

He sounds like he’s been drinking gravel. It obviously hurts him to talk because he’s keeping his voice quiet, a major injury for an excessively verbal Terran. She forgets sometimes how fragile he is, despite how often he gets bruised, concussed, drunk. It’s a wonder he lived long enough to meet her at all.

He steps closer to her, and she realises that she still hasn’t said anything.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“How come?”

 _I was torn between going after Thanos, or going after you_ , she doesn’t say. Partly because, though it’s neat, it’s ridiculous. Even if she stays – and that’s a large, god-sized if – it doesn’t mean she’s any closer to knowing what to do with the unspoken thing between them. Even if she would like to.

She watches him shift his hands into his pockets, hunch his shoulders. He’s cold, _idiot Terran boy, without even his coat._

She wraps her fingers around the railing, to stop them making all her decisions for her.

“I needed to think. I know that’s not something you’re familiar with” she says, but there’s no malice in it. He smiles at her a bit, and for a moment she thinks she’s deflected him. Then his expression shifts. Minutely, but it shifts.

“Where’d you go, last night?”

She freezes, looks out at the darkness beyond the glare of Knowhere. Her mind races. Things she desperately wants to say tangle with the things she shouldn’t, and the things she needs him not to know. But the web is complex, the knots hopeless. Eventually, she settles with honesty.

“I have really no idea what to do.” She looks back at him, and his expression is still soft, and worried. And a little hurt – she recalls darkness; Peter sleeping, waking; checking his eyes. _Fragile, in many ways._ She could have phrased that better.

He licks his lips, nervously.

“About what?”

She shrugs. She doesn’t want to elaborate, not really. They stand in silence, and he moves to stand next to her, leaning on the rail. He’s close enough she can feel how warm he is, and yet he’s shivering, just slightly.

“Lots of things.”

“Anything specific? I mean, I’m sure you’ll figure it out like you always do, but I’d like to at least _pretend_ like I helped. Come up with a brilliant plan, you know, the usual.”

She closes her eyes, smiles.  Turns to look at him to find him smiling at her.

“12 percent of a plan?” she asks, teasing.  His face falls, does something complicated. He flushes suddenly and looks away, and she feels as though she’s mis-stepped, again.

 “Hey, it worked that time, didn’t it?” he says quietly.

 “Yes, it did.”

A long silence. They have a lot of those, these days. Acknowledging there is something unspoken between them has unquestionably made the spoken parts more difficult to navigate. It was easier when they pretended those deep, dark waters didn’t exist.

Finally, he clears his throat.

“So go on, try me. What’s got the most dangerous woman in the whole damn galaxy standin’ out on some ice-cold window-ledge, when she’s s’posed to be asleep?”

And that’s just it, really. What is it, anchoring her here? A standard year ago, she’d have gone after Thanos without a second thought. One job done, onto the next. Mission completed: new mission. Instead she’s debating with herself, torn between action and inaction, and that’s not like her at all.

It occurs to her that, without realising it, she’s made one decision already.

She made it days ago, in the cargo ship. She made it again, on Sylar III. On the ship, floating above Ego’s collapsing planet.

A year ago, even, on the ruined surface of Xandar.

Being Peter Quill, of course, he beat her to the first unspoken word between them. Right here, in fact. And again, out there.

She shivers, lets go of the railing.

He might have got there first, but the last unspoken word between them will be hers.

“’mora?”

She looks at him, his delicate Terran skin, with the pillow creases still just-visible. His unruly sleep-mussed hair, the shadow of stubble on his cheeks. He looks back at her, quizzically. She watches him steadily, until his smile fades, shifts and becomes confusion, processing. Dawning understanding.

She sees the pulse in his neck speed up, watches his throat move as he swallows.

“You’re cold” she says, steps forward, and wraps her arms around him.

One arm around his ribs, hand pressed between his shoulder blades. Other hand on the back of his neck, fingers in his hair. Protective, shielding. She presses her face into the side of his neck, breathes him in.

He seems stunned for a moment, then she feels him move. He rests his hands on her waist, lightly, like he’s still expecting her to bolt any second.

She squeezes her arms tighter, and he responds, wrapping his arms round her with a force that nearly lifts her off her feet. He ducks his head into the crook of her shoulder.

Neither of them says anything.

~

Kraglin wakes up, slumped in a doorway, and for one horrible moment he thinks he’s been stabbed and left for dead.

Then he feels the throbbing in his head, the hollow feeling in his guts, and the overwhelming ache and nausea all over.

Just a hangover, after all.

It takes him a long while to get the energy together to sit up, and when he manages it, he has to shut his eyes again while his brain spins round and round in his skull. The red fin clunks against the door as he tilts his head back.

At first he thinks he’s imagining the noise – can barely hear it over the sound of his own blood pounding round his head.

Footsteps. Out in the galley.

~

Slowly, so imperceptibly even she doesn’t pick up on it immediately, he starts to sway them gently side to side. He shifts his hands on her a little, and, as momentum carries them just far enough, a small step, and back. A small step, and back.

She smiles into his skin, strokes her fingers in his hair. His breathing falters: he squeezes her tighter in response.

Slowly, increment by increment, they are moving around in a gentle, swaying circle.

She rests her forehead on his shoulder, chews at her lips. His hands are strong but gentle on her; her heart pounds in her chest. She forgets, sometimes, just how affectionate he is, how much he _feels_ things. Especially when it comes to her.

It frightens her, a little, how much he seems to feel for her. And seemingly in spite of her failure to reciprocate.

“I don’t know what I’m doing” she says, restating her position. It’s important, she thinks, that he knows this, and it gives her a measure of control over a situation in which she otherwise feels utterly out of her depth.

“Dancing” he murmurs, against her neck. She smiles helplessly, leans back a little, and he shifts back so they are face to face. He is smiling, but his eyes look sad.

“What?” she whispers, not quite believing that she’s messed this up already. His smile widens a little but his expression still isn’t quite happy. He swallows, and she’s stood so close she can hear his throat click.

“I wanna kiss you, ‘mora.”

She stops moving, stares at him.

Bang goes the ‘unspoken’ thing. Faintly, she realises he’s beaten her to it. Again.

“Okay,” she says. Her heart pounds in her ears.

He cups a hand under her jaw, slides his fingers carefully into her hair: watches her closely. She continues to stare at him. Her gaze drops to his mouth, momentarily, and then back to his eyes. It seems to be the signal he's waiting for.

His mouth is very soft against hers, his hand warm against her skin. She can feel his stubble scrape against her chin, his eyelashes brush her cheek. She presses her hands tighter against him: kneading the muscles in his back, curling protectively over his neck.

It’s over in a moment: he pulls away from her a little, and the terror of letting him go rears up in her.

She grips his hair, holds him in place with the hand on his back. He’s gazing down at her, green eyes huge and dark, sad and hopeful, and above all vulnerable, in a way even she’s not seen before.

She thinks of Xandar, and of the cargo ship. Of Thanos and Ego. Of the dark bite-bruise, that she knows is still marking his skin, beneath his shirt.

Something hot and possessive flares in her stomach.

She presses up, brings their mouths together again. He seems a little stunned for the barest moment, and then he ducks his head down to her, and she draws him closer, sucking gently on his lower lip. He whines into her mouth, hands fisting in the material of her clothing, and the sound makes her ache and spark all over. His tongue sweeps lightly against the seam of her lips, and she hums softly into the kiss, opens her mouth. Gentle but urgent press and retreat, and she winds her fingers in his hair as he pulls her closer, closer.  

For all the months of uncertainty and self-doubt over this, it feels so easy, and simple. He is warm, and solid and wrapped so tightly around her that she wonders if either of them are even capable of letting go.  

He tilts his head a little further, brushes his tongue against hers, and she shivers.

She expects his hands to stray, but they don’t. She expects him to change his mind, but he doesn’t. She expects Thanos or the Sovereign or just a Knowhere-ian local to strike them down, but none of them do.

He breaks the kiss, and then his mouth is soft and warm on her cheek, her jaw, just under her ear and down her throat. His breathing is uneven, but his hands are warm and steady where they’re holding her.

“Wow” he whispers, shakily.

She presses her mouth to his throat, feels the rapid beat of his pulse below his skin. It’s all too much for a second, and she squeezes her eyes shut. Strokes his hair and just holds on to him. He’s nuzzling at her neck, stroking his fingers through her hair to tidy it, smoothing down her clothes. She presses another, softer kiss to the side of his neck.

“We should go back to the ship” she says, because if she has to say anything more serious right now out loud, she’s not sure she’ll come out of it with her dignity. Plus, the others will be waking soon, and the two of them will be missed: she doesn’t feel like making this public knowledge just yet.

“Yeah, I know” he resettles his arms round her, rests his head against hers. Makes precisely no move to leave.

“Peter –”

“I like it out here.”

“You’re cold.”

“Not anymore.”

“You’ll get colder.”

“So warm me up.”

She smiles into the crook of his neck, swats him playfully on the shoulder.

“I shouldn’t have taken advantage of you, after you’d been drinking” she says. Above her, he snorts a laugh quietly, his chin resting on the top of her head.

“I have honestly never been more sober in my life.”

“So I don’t suppose there’s any chance you won’t remember this tomorrow?” she says, quietly.

He leans back from her abruptly, but his arms stay around her, hands crossed at the small of her back. He looks slightly horrified for a moment, until he catches the small smile tugging at her lips. The intensity of his feelings catches her off guard again, and she can’t help but feel guilty as relief floods his face, her own smile dropping away as his recovers.

He shakes his head, and his expression is so kind and genuine that something bursts in her chest.

“Not even, like, _half_ a chance.”

She smiles again, tries not to. Folds her lips together and finds herself unexpectedly trying not to cry. And then he’s kissing her again, warm and affectionate, and happy and _hers,_ and for a small, little piece of stolen time, none of the rest of the galaxy seems to matter.

~

Shifting awkwardly against the wall, Kraglin slowly turns his head. He watches as the door to the corridor slides open.

The figure in the doorway cocks its head at him, assessing.

And smirks.


	6. Twentieth century boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s just about dancing by the time he reaches the galley. 
> 
> He’s certainly singing.

_Well it's plain to see you were meant for me, yeah_  
_I'm your boy_  
_Your twentieth century_ _toy_

 _-_ _T. Rex_

 

They wander back slowly, an unspoken agreement to prolong the moment just a little longer. He walks beside her, hand clasped tightly but discreetly around hers, their fingers meshed together, like he’s afraid she’s going to vanish any second.

He might not be wrong. Moments ago she was considering leaving to go after Thanos. And now there is something so light and buoyant in her chest that it might lift her off the ground and float her away. She’s never felt so safe and so terrified together in her entire life.

She stops them just before they reach the ship – that’s a whole other level of difficulty, and she wants this to be just the two of them for as long as possible.

~

 _Just out of range of the ship’s cameras_ , he notes. She places a hand on his arm, turning him towards her. Her expression is focused, if nervous. She gives him a small, private smile. Her eyes drop to his mouth.

He leans down to her, waits, lets her close the gap between them.

His heart thrums in his chest and his skin heats. His world narrows to the warm, soft pressure of her mouth on his and he just about stifles the moan in his throat. She’s barely touching him and he feels like he’s on fire.

It’s gentle and chaste, and when she leans back he expects her to step away, brusque and business-like. Back to being Gamora, Most Dangerous Woman in the Galaxy: the version of herself that is a warrior and an assassin. The version who doesn’t dance, rarely smiles, and who certainly wouldn’t stoop to making out with him in the early hours of the morning.

Which is fine. Totally fine. She can do what she likes – does, in fact, most of the time. He sure as hell isn’t going to stop her, not unless he wants his ass handing to him on a platter, along with all his front teeth. He braces himself for the searing stab of disappointment, for wondering whether this will ever happen again. Whatever _this_ has been, exactly.

It’s just that for every version of Gamora that exists, there is a version of himself. And every single one of them would give their left arm to kiss her again. And again, for ever and ever. Including the version that was supposed to be taking over the galaxy with Celestial light.

She does lean back a little, but she pauses, hand stroking his neck. They’re so close their noses are just touching: he can feel her breath on his skin. He keeps his eyes closed, swallows hard. Braces himself for the abrupt dismissal and the sudden rush of empty space and cold air.

One hand curves under his jaw, other hand pulling him closer, fingers bunched in the material at his shoulder. She tugs at his bottom lip, opening her mouth against him, and it is _hot, soft, perfect._ He tilts his head so they fit together better, and she presses closer, deepening the kiss. It’s slow and languid and the bone-melting heat of it pools in his stomach and the tips of his fingers. When she finally lets him go he’s not sure he can stand on his own.

“We should go back separately” she says, and he nods dumbly, because he’s forgotten how to talk.

“We need some supplies anyway – I can pick some up” she says, making no move to go anywhere. He bites his lip, nods again, fails to stop the big, dumb smile spreading across his face.

“Okay.”

She smiles shyly at him, her small private smile. Then, quickly, she bobs up on her feet to press her mouth fleetingly to the corner of his lips, before turning gracefully away in a flick of black and pink hair, and vanishing.

He gives himself a few minutes, remembering how breathing works and how to use his voice. He grins at the walls like a lunatic, and turns back to the ship. He’s not really sure how the whole ‘going back separately’ shtick is going to work when he can’t stop grinning like an idiot. Someone is going to notice.

Besides, they live on a spaceship, not a planet. The other Guardians _will_ find out. The only way they could find out quicker is if they were all still on the much smaller _Milano_.

Not that he disagrees with the whole ‘on the down low’ angle Gamora’s clearly got in mind. D’ast knows he’s never been that subtle at anything, but he likes the idea of keeping this private for a little while. Like something special, just between the two of them. As long as he can get this smiling thing under control, and he remembers to stay well away from Mantis.

He hits the door release on the ship and steps in with a noticeable swagger, feeling like the luckiest bastard in the whole galaxy. He feels lighter and happier than he has in weeks, full of renewed purpose and manic energy. Everything on the _Quadrant_ looks new, and fresh, and laced with enticing possibility: he surveys the old familiar layout with the laser-sharp focus of a man looking for convenient make-out locations.

Yeah, the others are gonna find out pretty quickly.

~

She stands in the store, looking at the shelf unseeingly, her brain wholly taken up with the kind of emotional flat-spin she’s entirely unprepared to deal with.

After five minutes, she can’t take it anymore. She shakes herself out of it, marches up to the lone shopkeeper, pulls a gun, and demands two large bags of groceries suitable for five omnivores and two vegans.

It’s not the most stylish heist she’s ever run, but it does get her out of the shop pretty quickly.

~

He’s just about dancing by the time he reaches the galley. He’s certainly singing.

He expects a very-hungover Rocket to tell him to shut the hell up. He expects Drax to complain about Terran music. He expects Groot to say “I am Groot” in a particularly passive-aggressive way.

And he is determined to rise above it, to float securely in his impermeable bubble of blissed-out chill and happiness, and to ignore all of them.

What he gets is Kraglin, hunched over an icepack and groaning miserably.

And Nebula, sat beside him, looking especially sharp and ready to murder anyone who looks at her the wrong way.

“Where is Gamora?” she asks, in the kind of voice that most evil-doers use right before trying to shoot him in the head.

“Huh” says Peter.

~

She strides back to the ship, hardly sensible of the route she takes or the beings she shoulders out of the way.

The buoyant, airy feeling in her chest is expanding every moment, and she can hardly catch her breath. She’s preparing her speech as she goes, because if they’re going to do this – and, stars help her, it looks like they _are,_ and anyway she’s not sure she can tell that puppy-dog stare she’s changed her mind, even if she had – then there will need to be Rules.

Discipline.

Standards.

 _Something_ , because she cannot feel like this for the rest of her life, surely. It’s not workable.

Rules like keeping this private. Or not distracting her when she’s working. And _not_ trying to kiss her in every room on the ship.

Because he will try. Because he’s Peter, and he’s incorrigible.

And she shouldn’t encourage him.

(Something a bit traitorous inside her says she might just encourage him a little bit. _Why shouldn’t she? Just a little,_ because contrary to popular belief she’s not actually made of stone.)

Her stomach goes hot, and cold, and hot again. She stops in front of the airlock door, feeling wildly flustered, which is irritating in itself, but made doubly so because until now she wasn’t aware she was capable of _being_ flustered.

She’s fought wars, for d’ast sake.

~

Turns out the bubble of blissed-out chill and happiness isn’t Nebula-proof.

The Luphomoid eyes him suspiciously across the table.

He’s not really the sort of guy that girls take home to meet their parents, so he doesn’t have any comparative experience to work with. But he’s pretty sure the parents are supposed to eye him suspiciously, ask him questions about his future plans and generally assess whether he’s a total jackass or not.

And despite the fact she’s neither one of Gamora’s parents, Nebula’s eyes go through him like a blaster ray. While she cannot possibly know what’s been going down this morning, he can’t shake the fear that somehow, _somehow,_ she knows that he’s had his hands all over her sister.

Either that or she’s just naturally gifted at staring him out and making him feel guilty as all hell.

“I said where is Gamora? Is she not here?”

“Uhhh… don’t know. I just uh, woke up, went out for some fresh air.”

Nebula raises one cybernetic eyebrow.

“Fresh-er air. We had a kinda… big night, last night.”

“You mean you all poisoned yourselves until you passed out, leaving yourselves vulnerable to attack with the door unlocked so anyone could just walk in.”

“Hey, most people _knock_ before jus’ bargin’ into people’s d’ast houses” says Rocket, from somewhere near the floor. A deep, gravelly moan announces Drax’s agreement. Peter leans so he can peer around the corner, and sees Drax on the battered couch, with Rocket propped beside it, clutching a bottle of water nearly as tall as he is. The racoon flaps a paw at him in half-hearted greeting. Groot sits on the floor nearby, chewing the crunchiest, hardest cereal they own, with aggressive energy and incredible thoroughness.

Nebula makes an irritated noise in her throat as another layer of patience evaporates.

They have maybe five minutes before she slaughters them all in frustration. Peter hopes Gamora isn’t making too much of a production out of ‘fetching supplies’.

“Anyone seen Mantis?” he asks, to deflect the conversation. Rocket flaps a paw again.

“Still throwing up. But it’s not blue anymore.”

“Great” he says, weakly. Nebula’s look could rivet metal.

“I am Groot.”

“What? What is – oh hey, there she is now.”

Gamora appears on screen, two bags of supplies in either hand. The outer door whirrs, and moments later she steps into the galley. Peter twists round in his seat to face her: she looks somewhat surprised to see the full welcome party, casting a curious glance at him.

“Hey, guess what, your sister’s here!” he says, as cheerful as he can make it. He smiles his biggest, cheesiest, most d’ast-sake-help-me-I’m-dying-out-here grin he can manage, because only she can see him.

She looks at him and he reads guilt, confusion and a trace of pity. Finally, she smiles her small, private smile and puts down the bags. His heart flutters stupidly in his chest, because now he knows, _he knows for sure_ , what that smile means.

“The most dangerous woman in the galaxy, and you have her running your errands” says Nebula, with not-at-all-concealed contempt.

~

Gamora and Nebula disappear shortly afterwards for what Rocket describes as ‘girl-talk’, although noticeably not loud enough so either of the women can hear him.

“So what do we do now?” Kraglin asks, still holding an ice pack to his head. The five of them are sat around the common area, now mostly upright. Drax sits with his arms folded and eyes closed, awake but apparently “sensitive to the infernal neon light in this fetid hell-hole”.

“We get another job, right Quill?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

He’s honestly given it, like, zero thought. His immediate plans involve getting Gamora alone in a quiet corner of the ship and seeing what happens.

His medium term plans involve figuring out how to comfortably fit two people into one of the _Quadrant’s_ single bunks, whether it’s possible to amplify the Zune so he can teach her to dance to some of his new music, and how to avoid doing anything that will irrevocably piss her off.

His long term plans… well he’s never had any of those.

Although – thinking about music amplification…

“We could do with getting the rest of our stuff back. You know, from Berhert. Pick up the _Milano,_ too.”

He doesn’t mention the one remaining cassette tape and the tape deck out loud. He doesn’t need to; they know him too well at this point.

“I could do with my kit back” Rocket says, neutrally, and Peter is grateful for the tacit understanding and lack of fuss. He needs that tape deck. Plus the rest of their clothes are on the _Milano_. His t-shirts, Rocket’s jumpsuits.

Gamora’s dress.

The almost indecently short one.

_God he loves that dress._

Yeah, they should definitely go back and get the _Milano_.

Drax rumbles something incomprehensible but nods his head.

“I am Groot” says the medium-sized tree, waving his arms and stretching his legs out.

“Yeah, yeah don’t worry; you can keep your room on here if you like. _Milano’s_ too small for everyone anyway.”

“That’s a good point, Peter. What do we do with Nebula?” asks Kraglin, reaching for more water.

Peter stands up, shrugs.

“Try not to piss her off?”

~

So much for her speech.

She ushers Nebula into her room and out of the communal space as quickly as possible. She sits on the bed, with Nebula seated ram-rod straight in the chair. Gamora feels unaccountably judged by her sister’s sudden appearance, as if she’s been caught out at something. Nebula hasn’t said a word, but just seeing her and her single-minded focus calls her own state for the last few days into sharp relief.

Dancing, perhaps, when she should have been fighting.

But still the balloon-like thing in her chest refuses to dissipate. She thinks of Peter, grinning a little madly at her from the kitchen table – his hair still messed from where her fingers had run through it. She shivers, tries to bring herself back to the real world.

Nebula blinks her space-black eyes, and seems to be waiting for Gamora to start the conversation.

“How are you, sister?”

 “I am well. I am making good progress in my quest to rid the galaxy of Thanos.”

Well, if anything was going to ground her, that would do it. She sits forward.

_A warning from Thanos, even though she hasn’t threatened him or even considered him in many, many cycles._

_But she didn’t need to._

_Maybe this isn’t really about her at all._

She wonders if Thanos has tracked Nebula to Knowhere. The consequences of that… she needs details.

“You made it back to Sanctuary, you fought with him?”

Nebula tips her head to one side.

“Not exactly. But I have made powerful contacts, and I believe I have a plan to bring him down.”

“What is the plan?”

Nebula considers her for a moment. Her inclination, Gamora knows, is to cut straight to the chase. But she is clearly trying to carve out a sisterly space between them, an understanding that they are not just weapons, but sensitive, sentient beings, and family to each other.

It’s disconcerting, for both of them. And not a little irritating when all she needs right now are the facts, so she can protect the rest of her family.

She hears movement out in the corridor – some sort of decisive activity has clearly been selected for the day. It appears to involve Rocket and Peter arguing, and Drax shouting at them in a loud whisper to shut up.

She realises her face has heated, just a little, at the sound of his voice. Which is horrifying, from the perspective of self-control. But also startlingly new and unexpected.

Nebula narrows her eyes at her.

“The plan needs time to explain. But how are you, sister? You seem… distracted.”

The warning from Thanos, Nebula’s plan to defeat him. The impending destruction of her sister, her adoptive family and the galaxy as a whole. The discovery of Peter Quill’s mouth.  The million fragmentary pieces of her sense of self.

“I’m fine” she says.

 

 


End file.
